The West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. A federal lawsuit has been filed on behalf of inmates who allege that they were repeatedly abused by deputies in the detention center.
Jennifer Cappuccio Maher — Staff photographer

RANCHO CUCAMONGA >> In the middle of the night, San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies Brock Teyechea and Andrew Cruz would enter the cells of inmates at the West Valley Detention Center and awaken them with electric shocks from their stun guns, laughing out loud while inmates screamed in pain and begged for them to stop, inmates said.

And in what was described by inmates as a brutal hazing ritual, the two deputies, fresh from the training academy and not even employed with the Sheriff’s Department a year, would randomly shock inmate chow servers with their stun guns, the price the inmates had to pay for the privilege of being food servers, which brought with it lengthy time out of their cells.

“You never knew when to expect it,” said inmate John Hanson, 40, during an interview Thursday at the jail, where he has spent the last 16 months on a kidnapping charge and is one of six plaintiffs named in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Riverside alleging civil rights violations by Teyechea, Cruz and six other deputies at the jail.

The lawsuit also names as defendants Sheriff John McMahon and Capt. Jeff Rose, the commander of the jail.

McMahon on Thursday said he could not comment on the lawsuit, but said the alleged misconduct appears to be isolated to a few individuals in a certain area of the jail.

“We have found no information in our investigation to suggest that this is institutionalized,” McMahon said, adding that his department and the FBI continue cooperating with one another in their administrative and criminal investigations, respectively.

Neither McMahon nor the FBI could comment on the status of the pending investigations, which were announced publicly in April. The abuse allegations surfaced in early March, authorities said.

“We take these allegations very seriously, and we are doing a detailed investigation inside the facility,” McMahon said.

But Hanson said Thursday that no one from the Sheriff’s Department has talked to him or other inmates alleging the abuse. McMahon said he could not comment on that.

The lawsuit, which may not be the last to be filed, alleges Hanson and inmates Lamar Graves, Eddie Caldera, Brandon Schilling, Michael Mesa and Christopher Sly were subjected to acts of torture from Jan. 1, 2013, through March 2014. They were shocked with stun guns to their genitals, deprived of sleep, their arms lifted up behind their backs while handcuffed, had shotguns placed to their heads and were sodomized, according to the lawsuit.

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McMahon specifically disputed the sodomy allegations on Wednesday, saying there was no evidence indicating such was the case.

Hanson said he became a chow server on Feb. 17. He remembers the day well, and Teyechea’s and Cruz’s unique way of welcoming him aboard the crew.

“Teyechea said, ‘Oh, so you’re the new guy, huh?’” said Hanson.

Cruz then stepped forward and pulled out his stun gun, he said.

“(Cruz) said, ‘Where do you want it?’” Hanson said. “I told him in my right leg, above the knee.”

Hanson said he had been warned by his fellow inmates, Eric Smith and David Smith, no relation, that the chow servers got the “Taser treatment” all the time, and when approached by Teyechea and Cruz, to ask to “take it in the leg” because getting stunned in the back or ribs was extremely painful.

David Smith, one of the suspects in the high profile 2008 “bunker murder” case near Barstow, was transferred in February to the newly expanded High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto. His attorney, Gary Ablard, said Thursday he was having a private investigator look into any possible allegations that his client had been abused by inmates while he was housed at West Valley.

Eric Smith, 27, of Hesperia, was the first to report the abuse allegations to authorities and suffered the brunt of the abuse. He was transferred to the Central Detention Center in San Bernardino shortly after reporting the alleged abuse to authorities, inmates said.

Smith, who is in custody for robbery, declined to comment Thursday during an attempted visit at the jail.

In one incident, Teyechea allegedly sprayed pepper spray under the door of Mesa’s and Hanson’s cell after they witnessed the deputy doing the same thing to inmate Eric Smith and his cellmate in the neighboring cell.

“He said, ‘Do you want some of this, too?” Hanson said of Teyechea. He said he and Mesa huddled near an air vent inside their cell to avoid inhaling the caustic chemicals.

Following his “initiation” as a chow server, Hanson said it was open season. He said he was subjected to repeated stunning by Teyechea and Cruz. One time he said he was getting supplies from a utility closet when Cruz snuck up behind him and started stunning him in the neck, back and legs.

Inmates said the conduct wasn’t exclusive to Teyechea and Cruz. Other deputies at the jail engaged in similar conduct, and their supervisors turned a blind eye to the alleged activity.

In addition to administrators McMahon and Rose, the lawsuit identified eight deputies, including Teyechea and Cruz, and two civilian custody specialists.

The Sheriff’s Department had no record of another defendant, last name “Neil,” working or having worked at the jail, Bachman said.

She said Teyechea, Cruz and Oakley are no longer working for the department, but all the other employees named in the lawsuit remain on active duty.

According to the San Bernardino County Safety Employees Association newsletter, “Star & Shield,” Teyechea became a sworn deputy and union member in June 2013, followed by Oakley and Cruz in October 2013. Union president Laren Leichliter said the three came to the department right out of the sheriff’s training academy in Devore.

From the time he entered the jail, Teyechea’s conduct escalated, inmates said.

Inmate Lamar Graves, a plaintiff in the federal lawsuit filed Wednesday, said that on one occasion, Teyechea handcuffed another inmate to the stairwell and was yelling, “Who’s your master?” and “Whose house is this?” at the inmate.

“He was a sick trip,” said Graves, 31. “He let that power go to his head. He wasn’t like that when he first came in.”

On another occasion, Graves said he was serving food when Teyechea came up behind him and stunned him in the buttocks, making him drop a stack of trays.

“He yelled, ‘Hurry up, Graves!’” Graves said, adding that he too was subjected to Taser gun abuse by Teyechea and Cruz in the middle of the night as he slept. He said he has a hip deformity and has metal screws in his hips, which made the electric shocks even more painful.

Trinidad Macias, 32, of Colton, said he made the mistake of wearing two white T-shirts prior to a court appearance, a violation of jail policy.

He said Teyechea conducted a body cavity search without cause, handcuffed his hands behind his back, then slammed him to the concrete floor in a breezeway inside the jail where about a dozen other inmates were waiting to get on a bus to go to court. Macias said Teyechea pulled his arms up behind his back and was yelling, “Whose house is this, bitch?”

“I gave up and said, ‘Ok, it’s your house,’” said Macias, interviewed outside his house on Wednesday. He was released from jail on Monday, May 5, and is being represented by Victorville attorneys Stanley Hodge and Jim Terrell, who are representing the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Terrell said Thursday the alleged conduct by deputies at the jail was sanctioned, and they were rewarded for such conduct.

“The system encouraged this type of aggressive behavior and the incentive programs actually encouraged this type of action,” Terrell said in an e-mail. “Reporting by prisoners was treated quickly with punishment and labeling individuals as snitches and punishing entire units for the actions of one person who was singled out.”

Inmate and plaintiff Eddie Caldera, 34, who was in custody on suspicion of robbery and assault with a deadly weapon, said in a recent interview at the jail that Teyechea became infuriated with him in March for “fishing” with another inmate, a process in which inmates cast string anchored by a piece of soap into another cell, where desired goods are attached, then the line pulled back by the inmate.

Caldera said Teyechea ordered him to put his hands behind his back, then handcuffed him. The deputy lifted Caldera and dragged him down the hall and into the G wing, banging Caldera’s head on the door in the process.

Teyechea forced Caldera into a room used for cutting inmates’ hair, slammed him onto the ground, face first, then placed his knee atop Caldera’s neck. He grabbed Caldera’s handcuffed wrists and began pulling them up behind his back, Caldera said.

“I told him he’s going to break my arms, and he said, ‘Whose house is this, bitch?’” Caldera said, adding that Teyechea made him kiss the floor.

In another incident, Oakley gave Graves his smart phone and asked if he could shoot video of him stunning another inmate in a utility closet, Graves said.

Oakley asked the inmate, whom Graves identified as his former cellmate Ceasar Vasquez, if he had ever been stunned under the armpit, and that Oakley would “give him something” if Vasquez let him stun him, Graves said, adding that he shot the video in the closet while Oakley stunned his cellmate. He said he doesn’t know if authorities have seen the video, or if Oakley erased it.

Teyechea, Cruz and Oakley could not be reached for comment.

Macias said he witnessed much of the alleged abuses.

“It was like a game to them. Just to victimize you, belittle you, make you feel like you were nothing,” Macias said. “Obviously we were in their house and we had to respect them.”

About the Author

Joe Nelson covers San Bernardino County for The Sun, Daily Bulletin and Redlands Daily Facts. Reach the author at joe.nelson@langnews.com
or follow Joe on Twitter: @sbcountynow.